


If You'l Have Me

by seleneheart



Category: due South
Genre: Blanket Permission, M/M, post-cotw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 04:55:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18631246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seleneheart/pseuds/seleneheart
Summary: Post CotW, Ray K doesn't want to adapt





	If You'l Have Me

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Fandom Snowflake challenge in January. Interesting that this phrase has popped up in other places. My take here.

Ray wanders his hotel room, a little weirded out by the warmth and the space. He bounces on the bed, just to test, and finds it unaccountably soft and luxurious. Springing to his feet, Ray resumes pacing, trying to decide why an innocuous tourist trap of a hotel room in the Northwest Territories is bothering him so much.

The space, he finally decides. For weeks, he’s been in a tiny tent, small and tight of necessity. And it had contained another body, something his hotel room is sorely lacking. The ceiling is too high, and he’s been a cop too long to feel comfortable when his instincts are shouting at him that he isn’t safe.

Safety is the close-in roof of the tent and Ben’s soft breathing beside him, arm wrapped close around his shoulders to keep him there, keep their warmth there.

And this stupid room is a symbol of the separation that will soon be much worse than ‘just down the hall.’ Ray tries to imagine his life without Fraser in it, and the idea is too horrifying to contemplate. And not safe. So fucking not safe.

Before he can talk himself into behaving rationally, Ray heads for the room next door, forcing himself to knock as affirmatively as possible to hide the quaking the rest of him is experiencing.

Ben answers, looking rumpled, but Ray has seen Fraser in various states of sleeping and waking enough to know that he hasn’t been asleep.

“Can’t sleep,” he mutters tersely to Fraser’s inquisitive eyebrow.

“Ah,” is the only response, but Ben steps aside, giving him room to enter if he chooses.

Ray forces himself into loose-limbed casualness as he walks into the room. “Got used to sleeping with someone else,” he explains. “I adjusted to that once.” Ray winces, knowing that referencing Stella or his marriage or its dissolution around Fraser is never the best of ideas.

“I could do it again, but I don’t want to,” he adds quickly.

Fraser doesn’t say anything, just wipes his hand over his face and turns back to his bed. Ray figures no answer wasn’t ‘no’ so he follows, curling himself under the covers while Ben gets settled. With a sigh, Ben hitches his shoulder, an invitation for Ray to occupy his usual place there, the one that had been a necessity in the cold of the wastelands, but not so much anymore. Ray isn’t one to turn down any ground he can get in terms of being near Fraser, and he immediately scoots in, his body curving around Fraser.

While Fraser tightens his arm across Ray’s shoulders, Ray rests his hand against Ben’s chest, where he can feel the steady thumping of his heart.

They relax into the quiet of the room, breath evening out, peaceful, drowsy but not quite on the verge of sleep.

“You could use the hotel facilities tomorrow.” Fraser breaks the silence of the room, his voice a low rumble in Ray’s ear. “Buy your tickets back to Chicago.”

The statement strikes at the heart of what is bothering Ray, the conclusion presented by his overly-big room, and the loneliness that awaits him in Chicago.

Gathering his courage, because fuck it . . . he has nothing left to lose at this point, Ray answers carefully, “I could, but I don’t want to.”

Fraser’s breathing changes then, becoming fraught with uncertainty, the slightest hitch that wouldn’t have been noticeable if Ray’s hand wasn’t on his chest. “What is it that you would prefer to do, Ray?”

“Stay here. With you.”

Wishing he was more eloquent, and could command those big words that meant specific things the way Fraser could, Ray fumbles to explain what he wants. But then he remembers the words he’d been given, months ago now, with their implications of free will, second chances, and starting fresh, and hands them back to Fraser, hoping he’ll understand everything the words meant to him then, and what they mean now.

“If you’ll have me.”

Fraser rolls abruptly, startling Ray out of his relaxed pose and pushing him onto his back. Ben’s big hand slides up to clench the back of Ray’s head, heavy body shifting half over him.

“Have you?” he growls. “I’ll have you in every way possible.”

Evidently Fraser understands exactly what Ray meant, and he is all in on the idea. Relieved that his gamble paid off, Ray relaxes his body, welcoming whatever Fraser wants to do. He expects the ‘having’ to happen almost immediately, but Fraser’s powerful body seems to be leashed, tethered by some unanswered question.

Ray recollects an iceberg they’d seen calving in Melville Sound. The berg had been hanging onto its parent glacier by the thinnest bridge of ice, and Fraser had pulled them away from the threatened violence as quickly as possible. The iceberg hung there for long moments that ached into an unbearable tension before it crashed into the icy sea, sending shock waves through the water and disrupting even the air with its ferocious birth.

Fraser has that same waiting energy - suspended in his stasis by some unknown hesitation, delaying for something Ray doesn’t understand at first. But all the pieces come together at last - Fraser will ravish him, alpha male and possessive, his power loosed and free of the bounds of civilization. Everything Ray wants in a lover and partner. But not without . . .

“Yes. Ben. Yes to everything. Have me, have all of me.”

And the wave breaks over Ray, but Fraser is there, holding him, holding him up. Ray surrenders to it, knowing he’s safe and won’t drown.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Iceberg Metaphor](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21707293) by [JackyMedan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackyMedan/pseuds/JackyMedan)




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